The taxi heads south, along a freeway that I don’t remember.
“Yanui Beach,” I say to Summer. “When did we go there?”
Summer shrugs. “I don’t remember,” she says. “Everything’s changed so much. Yanui is pretty, but it’s jam-packed with restaurants. There are good points to the changes, though. Everyone speaks English now, and there are so many shops catering to Western tastes.”
Something in me preferred having to speak and eat Thai when in Thailand, but I let the comment pass. “Why aren’t you staying in a marina?” I ask.
Summer whispers her explanation, leaning so close that her breath tickles my ear. “It’s too risky to take Bathsheba into the marina when it’s already checked out of customs.”
My dreams of cocktails and billionaires drift away in the steaming air. Oh well, that’s not why I’m here. I’m here to sail. With Adam.
We leave the freeway and twist and turn through streets as busy as if it were bright day. Gangs of Western men with impressive beer bellies saunter along the busy sidewalks, drinks in hand. Thai girls loiter in the doorways to pubs—brothels?—wiggling in tinselly dresses.
“Are those girls legal?” I ask. “They look twelve.”
“Most of them are older than they look,” says Summer, “but it has been troubling us. In fact, we support a charity that helps get underage girls out of the industry. Phuket’s not all like this, though, Twinnie. There are unspoiled parts, and the yachting community is so lovely. We’ve made the best friends. It’s hard to leave them.”
Summer makes “the best friends” everywhere. She can leave them behind because she knows she’ll make more wherever she goes. When she and Adam bought the yacht, she told me that they planned to spend six months sailing around the Seychelles, visiting Adam’s extended family. Summer is unafraid of the deluge of in-laws.
At last we turn down a narrow street lit up with restaurants, and I glimpse perfect white sand. We’re inches from the beach. Between ramshackle buildings, I see the black shining jewel that is the night ocean. The Andaman Sea. Through the open window, the eternal fresh smell of wilderness wafts over me.
Summer pays the driver a sinful amount. “That’s almost the last of my baht,” she mutters, before disappearing into a shop for some last-minute supplies. I take off my red high heels and press my feet into the soft, crystalline sand. Even at night it’s warm from the sun.
Yanui Beach. The name comes back to me. This is where Dad died. This is the place where I left my dreams. It’s the last place I remember being happy, on our sailing holidays with Dad, after the divorce.
The last holiday, the Easter when we were thirteen, we sailed all the way to the Andaman Islands, spending two nights at sea. Dad made Summer and me take a watch together, sailing the boat through the black night so he could get some sleep. He said that he had taken on adult responsibilities at thirteen and that it had been the making of him. But Summer was so scared and useless that I sent her to bed and sailed Bathsheba on my own.
And it turned out Dad was right. I grew up that night. There were twenty tons of exquisite sailboat under my command, responding to my every move like a dance partner, and I tuned sails and hand-steered with an instinct I’d barely known I had. It was as though I’d been born to it. Sometimes when I played the piano, especially if no one else could hear me and I was just playing, not practicing for an exam or concert, my hands felt like this—alive and natural, as though they knew things about life and living that I myself didn’t know. At Bathsheba’s helm, my whole body stirred with that same sense of knowing, of being alive, of everything being right.
When Dad came on deck in the mauve dawn, Bathsheba was skimming through the milky waters of the Andaman Sea on a beam reach, eating up the miles. Dad had reefed the genoa before he went to bed, to keep things gentle, but I had unfurled it inch by inch, and now it was as full as a dream, and we were flying. Ahead, on the western horizon, a dark shape shimmered. South Andaman Island. Landfall.
Dad couldn’t believe how many miles we’d made, and as the sun warmed the back of my neck, I basked in rare paternal praise. Summer, emerging sleepy-eyed from her quarter berth, accepted Dad’s sarcastic rebuke as her due and congratulated me, while Ben stared at me as though I were some kind of sorceress.
“One day I’ll take you across an ocean,” Dad said, and I was elated enough to reply, “No, I’ll take you!” Ben and Summer stiffened, and I thought I’d gone too far, but my father laughed, slapped me on my back, and said, “Keep sailing, skipper, and I’ll fry the bacon.”
I was on top of the world. Back then, there was no race to marry, no will that pitted us against our half sisters, no need to have kids at all. Now I’m twenty-three, and for the first time in my life, I feel old. I can’t believe I’ve let five years go by since I reached marriageable age and I still haven’t produced the magic heir. An ugly halfwit could have done it by now, and here I am, brilliant and beautiful—well, perhaps not beautiful, but pretty enough—and still not pregnant. Even after Noah moved out, I took a few pregnancy tests in the hope he’d left me a small but significant parting gift, but no luck. Now my marriage is one hundred percent over, and I have to wait twelve months before I can even get divorced. It’s a disaster.
The one point of light, the one glimmer of hope, is that however dumb I’ve been these last five years, Summer’s been dumber. Ever since she was fourteen, she has clung to the dopey idea that she’s not going to let the will rule her life. She says she’s happy with the money she and Adam have together. They are comfortable by most people’s standards. Let’s face it, they are wealthy. Just not Carmichael-fortune wealthy.
And Summer still says that Tarquin’s “enough for now” and that she’s in no hurry to give Adam another baby.
Not even for a hundred million dollars.
Summer emerges from the shop and grabs my suitcase. She struggles with its weight.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t realize we’d be at anchor. I would have packed lighter.”
“It’s no problem,” says Summer.
I follow her down the beach. Restaurants have set out tables and chairs on the sand, and rows of farang are eating and drinking in the half dark, but we glide past and leave them at the high-tide mark. The tide is a long way out, and down on the wet sand, in the darkness, we find the rarest thing in Asia: solitude.
The moon has not yet risen, but stars glimmer overhead. A soi dog slinks away from my sister as she trudges ahead of me toward a black shape at the water’s edge.
“Do you recognize Solomon?” she asks. Does she mean the dog? No—the looming shape ahead merges with my memory of the name.
Solomon, our dinghy. An antique rowing dory, crafted from New Zealand kauri, painted black to match Bathsheba. It waits for us in the shallows, quiet as an ambush.
It’s not the most practical tender. There’s no room to mount an outboard on its fine stern. I’m amazed Summer and Adam haven’t replaced it with a motorized dinghy. Summer is no oarswoman.
My hand grips Solomon’s gunwale, and as the smooth timber warms my skin, I feel my childhood shimmering around me in the night. All the best moments, before Dad died. I learned to row in this dinghy, long before Summer or Ben could. And then we kids went everywhere in Solomon. We were free to explore beaches and coves, streams and caves. I was in charge.